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Camp Sumter / Andersonville Prison

Detail from "Bird's-eye view of Andersonville Prison from the south-east," 1890.

LC-USZC4-10808

The largest and most famous of 150 military prisons of the Civil War, Camp Sumter, commonly known as Andersonville, was the deadliest landscape of the Civil War. Of the 45,000 Union soldiers imprisoned here, nearly 13,000 died. At its most crowded, it held more than 32,000 men, where forced overcrowding compounded problems of supply and distribution of essential resources.

Each prisoner exerienced Andersonville on their own terms, meaning that the story of captivity here is a very complex one. The pages below explore some of the stories of Andersonville: